Rarely would a day go by without Timothy Kern making a phone call, sending a text or just dropping by to see his boys.

“We liked to hang out,” Nicholas Kern said when prosecutors asked him to explain his relationship with his father. Dad was always there for baseball games or just to talk.

On Tuesday, the GlenOak High senior was in Summit County Common Pleas Court testifying in the trial of Brogan Rafferty — a 17-year-old who should be a Stow High School student but instead is charged with aggravated murder in Timothy Kern’s death.

Investigators believe the 47-year-old Kern was the last victim of Rafferty and Richard J. Beasley, 53, of Akron, the suspected Craigslist killers who lured victims last year using an ad seeking a farm caretaker.

Rafferty is being tried this week on multiple counts of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and theft. Beasley’s trial on similar charges is set for early next year.

Prosecutors believe Beasley killed the men, apparently to steal their identities and belongings, and that Rafferty was his accomplice, sharing in some of the stolen goods and digging graves for victims. Defense lawyers counter that Rafferty unwillingly participated in the crimes because he had been threatened by Beasley, a man who had been his friend and mentor.

Most of the evidence continued to focus on Beasley as the man who investigators believe wrote and posted the ad, recruited applicants and eventually shot four men. Three of the men – Kern; Ralph Geiger, 56, of Akron; and David M. Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Va. – were killed. Scott Davis, 51, formerly of Stark County, escaped after being wounded in his right arm.

Davis’ escape launched the investigation that led police to Beasley and Rafferty in November.

MIXED FEELINGS

During testimony Tuesday, Nicholas Kern and his mother Tina (Kern’s ex-wife) told jurors how Kern had found a job at as the caretaker of a farm in southern Ohio.

Nicholas said he drove his father to a Springfield Township restaurant to interview for the job and that his father met an older man there. When they left the restaurant Kern was excited because he believed he had the job but also disappointed because it would take him to southern Ohio and away from his sons.

Nicholas said he last saw his father on Nov. 12, 2011, a Saturday, when he visited the boy’s house in Plain Township. Tina Kern said her ex-husband stopped by seeking help with paperwork to sign over the title of his car to his new boss.

The next day Timothy Kern was set to meet his new boss. He promised to see his son the following Wednesday, Nicholas said. But the Kern family never heard from Timothy again.

On Nov. 20, Tina Kern read a newspaper story about police investigating the shooting of men who had applied on Craigslist for a job as a farm caretaker. She contacted police, then checked her family’s computer and found that her ex-husband had used it to answer a similar Craigslist ad. Tina Kern turned the computer and a copy of the email over to the FBI, and told agents that a family friend had seen Timothy Kern’s car in a Middlebranch Road NE parking lot for the past week.

Page 2 of 2 -
INVESTIGATORS TESTIFY

Dennis Sweet, an agent with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, said investigators received information that led them to Kern’s body buried in a grave near the Rolling Acres Mall. Sweet didn’t say who supplied the information.

Ohio BCI and FBI agents supplied most of Tuesday’s testimony. Agents described searches of Rafferty’s house in Stow, a southeast Akron house where Beasley rented a room and an east Akron house were Beasley had taken Pauley’s belongings.

Jurors also saw surveillance camera footage from buildings in the 3500 block of Middlebranch Street NE where Kern left his car. A white sedan, similar to one owned by Rafferty, is seen pulling into the lot. Three figures — believed to be Kern, Rafferty and Beasley — are seen in the parking lot and eventually getting into the white sedan.

While searching Beasley’s rented room investigators said they learned that he used Ralph Geiger’s identity when seeking treatment from an Akron doctor. Agents confiscated prescription bottles that Beasley had filled in Geiger’s name.

At Rafferty’s house investigators confiscated a metal container similar to one that Pauley had brought with him from Virginia. Special Agent Jacob Kunkle testified that he found a discarded, undated note that Rafferty had left for his father. It explained the teen’s planned activities and included the sentence: “Working at a job digging holes for a friend’s family.”